Soviet Union

Oil

After many years of occasionally spectacular growth, Soviet oil
production began to level off in 1983, although the Soviet Union
remained the world's largest oil producer. Since that time, Western
experts have disagreed sharply about the amount and importance of
production changes, especially because exact Soviet fuel reserve
figures remained a state secret. It is known that at the end of the
1980s oil production did not increase significantly from year to
year.

The Tyumen' reserves of western Siberia were a huge discovery
of the 1960s that provided the bulk of oil production increases
through the 1970s. By the end of that decade, Tyumen' had overtaken
the Volga-Ural fields as the greatest Soviet oil region. The
Volga-Ural fields had provided one-half the country's oil in the
early 1970s but fell to a one-third share in 1977. By the
mid-1980s, Tyumen' produced 60 percent of Soviet oil, but there was
already evidence that Tyumen' was approaching peak production.

Meanwhile, new policies in the early 1980s accelerated drilling
rates throughout the country, especially in western Siberia, but
lower yields made this drilling expensive. By 1980 the older oil
reserves were already being exhausted. Substantial untapped
reserves were confirmed in the Caspian, Baltic, and Black seas and
above the Arctic Circle, but all of them contained natural
obstacles that made exploitation expensive. Soviet planners relied
on the discovery of a major new field comparable to those in
western Siberia. But by 1987 no major discovery had been made for
twenty-two years. In the mid-1980s, Soviet oil exploration
concentrated on the farther reaches of the Tyumen' and Tomsk
oblasts (see Glossary), east of the established western Siberian
fields. Offshore drilling was centered on the Caspian, Barents, and
Baltic seas and the Sea of Okhotsk. Several shipyards were building
offshore drilling platforms, the largest being the yards at
Astrakhan' and Vyborg. Foreign shipyards also provided offshore
drilling equipment. In 1984 the Soviet Union had eleven
semisubmersible platforms in operation.

The Soviet oil-drilling industry has relied heavily on Western
equipment for difficult extraction conditions, which become more
common as existing reserves dry up. The average service life of a
Soviet-made drilling rig was ten years, compared with fifteen or
twenty for comparable Western equipment. Centers of Soviet drilling
rig production were in Volgograd, Sverdlovsk, and Verkhnyaya
Pyshma, about twenty kilometer north of Sverdlovsk.

Increased distance from well to consumer was also a major
concern for the oil industry. Ninety percent of oil was transported
by pipeline. The Soviet oil pipeline system doubled in length
between 1970 and 1983, reaching 76,200 kilometers. Before 1960 the
system totaled only 15,000 kilometers of pipe
(see Pipelines
, ch.
14). As oil production leveled off in the 1980s, so did pipeline
construction. In 1986 the Soviet Union had 81,500 kilometers of
pipeline for crude and refined oil products; in 1989 the number of
kilometers remained the same.

The oil boom of the 1970s in western Siberia brought rapid
growth of Soviet oil-refining centers. In 1983 most of the fiftythree refineries were west of the Urals. At least five new
facilities were built between 1970 and 1985. Soviet refining
equipment fell below Western standards for such higher-grade fuels
as gasoline, so that high-octane fuels were scarce and heavier
petroleum products were in surplus.